Social Influence - Conformity: Asch's research

Question 1

Who took part in the study?

Answer 1

123 Male american undergraduates

Question 2

What was the procedure for Asch’s research?

Answer 2

Procedure:
- Participants were tested in groups of 6 to 8
- Each group was presented with a standard
line and three comparison lines
-Participants had to say aloud which comparison line matched the standard line in length
-In each group there was only one genuine (naive) participant the remaining were confederates
-The genuine participant was seated second to last and did not know the other participants were fake participants
-The fake confederate participants all gave the same incorrect answer
Confederates were told to give the incorrect answer on 12 out of 18 trails

Question 3

How many critical trials were there?

Answer 3

There were 12 critical trials

Question 4

What were the findings of Asch’s research?

Answer 4

Findings
- The naive participants agreed with the confederates’ incorrect answers 32% of the time:
- 75% of the sample conformed to the majority on at least one trial
-25% of participants never gave a wrong answer, which shows there were individual differences

Question 4

What is the % of times the naive participants give the wrong answer?

Answer 4

32%

Question 5

What is the % of people who conformed at least once?

Answer 5

75%

Question 6

What is the % of people who conformed did not conform?

Answer 6

25%

Question 7

Define the asch effect?

Answer 7

The extent which participants conform even when the situation is unambiguous

Question 8

What was the result of group size variation?

Answer 8

A small majority isn’t sufficient for influence. Also any more than 3 confederates is needed for influence to be exerted

Question 9

Did conformity levels increase or decrease with unanimity ? Also what is the % ?

Answer 9

The presence of a dissenter decreased conformity by 25%

Question 10

What does task difficulty variation results suggest?

Answer 10

The more difficult the task, the more people conform

Question 11

Research support- Lucas et al 2006
for Asch

Answer 11

P: One strength of Asch’s research is it has been supported by other studies
E: Lucas et al (2006) asked participants to solve easy and hard maths problems and found participants conformed to the wrong answer more often when the problems were hard
E: This supports Asch’s claim that task difficulty is one variable that effects conformity
L: therefore …

Question 12

Limitation of Asch Research - Limited application due to gender-bias it is not generalisable

Answer 12

One limitation of Asch’s research is that it is not generalisable
E: Asch used a biased sample of 123 male American undergraduate students, so we are unable to conclude if female students would conform similarly to the male students
E: As a result Asch study lacks population validity
L: Therefore, these results are limited to their application

Question 13

Limitation of Asch’s research - Child of its time

Answer 13

P: Another limitation of Asch research is that it is a child of its time
E: Perrin and Spencer (1980) who repeated Asch’s study with engineering students in the UK.
They found only one person conformed in a total of 396 trials.
E: This means that the Asch effect may not be consistent across situations and across time
L: Therefore it’s not a fundamental feature of human behaviour

Question 14

Limitation of Asch research: Limited application due to ecological validity

Answer 14

P: Another limitation of Asch’s research is that it has low ecological validity
E: Asch used a line judgement task ( an artificial task), which doesn’t reflect conformity in everyday life
E) Consequently Asch’s research cannot be generalised to real-life situations, such as why people may start smoking.
L: Therefore these results have limited application.